


the future for me is already a thing of the past (you were my first love and you will be my last)

by sam_kom_trashkru



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Baby Jasper is honestly the cutest thing??????, Bellamy Blake is a total history nerd FIGHT ME, Childhood Memories, F/M, M/M, Monty is a cinnamon roll too good for this world too pure, Pining, Unrequited Love, aka me being bitter bc now I have black stains on my hands that I have to scrub off, also starring: SILVER NITRATE, current canon jasper is a piece of shit like chill dude you aren't the only one suffering, ft. Miller the bully who becomes Miller the Awesome, jonty, with Minty friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 00:13:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6215848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sam_kom_trashkru/pseuds/sam_kom_trashkru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every memory, there's Jasper.</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>Monty through the years as he realizes that he is hopelessly in love with his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the future for me is already a thing of the past (you were my first love and you will be my last)

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so, I'm an emotional wreck after 307 (LEXA DESERVED SO MUCH BETTER JROT) and I was like "fuck it, Jonty". This was supposed to be cute but it got kinda painful.

It’s on days like these, days in which Monty wants nothing more than to curl up into a little ball and cry until he can’t anymore and then continue crying still, until tear-tracks are burned into his cheeks, that he likes travelling to the deep recesses of his minds. Because he knows that he can’t cry. He can’t. He has to be strong. 

He forgets, on these days, that he is only fifteen years old, and chooses instead to reflect on the years before.

* * *

 

Hannah Green and Meredith Jordan had been close friends growing up, so their sons were destined to be the same. They’d even been conceived around the same time, their birthdays only one day apart (Jasper used to  _ love  _ to lord over the fact that he was older, and Monty would simply roll his eyes every time).

The very first memory that Monty could pluck out of his head, Jasper was there. 

They were two-and-a-half years old, and Monty had missed out on a day at daycare, which Meredith ran, due to a minor cough. Nothing to worry about, really, but Hannah had insisted he remain in their quarters that day under the watchful eye of his father, Michael, who’d been able to take the day off to spend time with his slightly under the weather son. 

Monty had been sitting on his bed, eyes scanning over words on a book he couldn’t quite comprehend yet, simply admiring the way that the ink moved precisely across the pages, making up stories in his own mind in lieu of actually reading, when the door had inched open, and Jasper’s grinning little face had peaked in, dark brown curls falling over his brown eyes, and Monty could clearly make out the white of all of his little teeth, that’s how wide Jasper was smiling. 

The grinning boy had quickly skipped over to his best friend, plopped down across from the boy on the bed, and leaned carelessly forward over the book (not wrinkling any pages, much to Monty’s relief), and grabbed the other boy, pulling him into a big sweeping hug and kissing him sloppily on the forehead, making the smaller boy of Asian decent giggle softly. 

From his position, head resting on Jasper’s shoulder, Monty could see his mother and Mrs. Jordan smiling back at the two from the doorframe, and he lifted a little hand from where it’d been placed on Jasper’s back to wave at them.

“Missed you,” Jasper affirmed when he finally pulled away from Monty a few long moments later, before pausing and pulling two toy cars out of his short pockets, “wanna play?”

They spent the next two hours simply enjoying each other’s company as little kids do, running the cars over rumbled bedsheets and bedside tables, up and down the walls (Monty didn’t cough once that entire two hours).

* * *

 

He’s five years old and wearing a smart looking navy blue polo shirt and khaki shorts, the standard school uniform for children on the Ark. Jasper’s standing next to him, slouching slightly, hands buried into his pockets. Jasper’s shirt is light green. Green’s his favorite color (Monty knows because he constantly finds green things to save away and give to him, Jasper must have a drawer full of little gifts at this point in time). 

Monty is fidgeting constantly because he’s nervous, fussing with the hem of his shirt and tapping his shoe on the floor anxiously, and Hannah and Michael are beaming at him as they straighten his collar and kiss his head (Jasper whines when Meredith and Jason do the same to him, but secretly enjoys it) before sending the two into the classroom where other children their age are already situated. 

The gaggle of children babbling together, one boy busy braiding his friend’s hair (the boy’s name was Edmund, and his hair was as long as some of the girls’, and Monty often found himself admiring it) and he and Jasper quickly found somewhere more quiet to sit, off in the corner. 

Mrs. Monroe had been talking for less than ten minutes when the two boys realized how utterly  _ boring  _ this was going to be. 

Monty had puzzled out how to read on his own a year ago, and Jasper had stubbornly insisted that he learn too, and while their writing was messy at best, it was still legible, and they were both extremely proud (they didn’t know it at the time, but they were genii, apparently). They’d tuned out most of the lesson, instead tracking styluses over touchscreens absentmindedly, and when Mrs. Monroe stopped to check in on them, she’d paused, mouth slightly agape, and had taken the two boys to see the man in charge of children’s education, Alfred Lewis. 

At some point on the walk there, Monty had burst into tears, thinking himself to be in trouble, and Jasper was stony-faced, glaring at everything in an attempt to find  _ something  _ or  _ someone  _ to blame for making his  _ very  _ best friend in the  _ whole wide  _ galaxy cry (he’d settled on Mr. Lewis for about three seconds before deciding the man was a foe he wasn’t ready for, and then kept his eyes trained firmly on the floor). 

As it turned out, they weren’t in any trouble at all. 

Mrs. Monroe had been surprised that Monty had sketched out schematics for a computer, complete with correct geometry equations for the angles and basic algebra for some of the programming, and Jasper had begun writing chemical equations (he knew the Elements of the Periodic Table song by heart, had driven his parents up the wall once he’d memorized it, and frankly Monty almost regretted excitedly showing it to his friend once he’d found it). 

The next day, they were no longer in the same class as Edmund with the long hair, but rather with children much older than them who had scowled and grumbled when they saw younger children in their midst, but had grudgingly accepted them when Mrs. Monroe shot them stern looks and told them that under  _ no  _ circumstance were they to give their new classmates any trouble. 

The first person to introduce themselves to the two uncharacteristically shy five-year-olds (of course they were shy, they were surrounded by people eight years older than them) was a kind-faced girl named Gina, who smiled all the time and whose hair smelt like strawberries (Monty wasn’t exactly sure what strawberries smelt like, but he was sure that they smelt like Gina’s hair), and the class had quelled, choosing instead to ignore the two little kids who sat towards the front of the classroom (if they’d sat in their usual spots towards the back, they wouldn’t have been able to see the board). 

A boy named Bellamy who was obsessed with Ancient Greece sat in front of them, and he commanded some level of respect amongst his peers, and once Bellamy decided that they were alright, the others followed suit.

After four weeks of school, Monty had to acknowledge that the butterflies in his stomach weren't just from nervousness.

* * *

 

He is seven years old, tapping his feet against the floor as he always does when he's anxious or upset, and Jasper is hiding behind a corner, sticking his head round the doorframe  _ ever so slightly _ to try and catch a glimpse of a girl he'd had a crush on for two weeks now, Emily Pritchard. They've grown slightly in the past two years, the other boy’s hair shaggier, but kept away from his eyes by a pair of much-too-large chemists goggles (Monty had traded a week of saved rations in order to get Jasper his own pair, the initials  _ J.Q.J,  _ for Jasper Quincey Jordan, inscribed neatly by Monty’s careful hand on the side, Jasper had been over the moon when presented with the gift) and half the freckles splattered over his skin were actually stains of Silver Nitrate from carelessness (not that Jasper minded, he thought they looked cool). 

Once Jasper finally caught a glance of the current object of his affections, the red haired girl with bright green eyes, he quickly returned to the side of the wall Monty was on, slinking down to the ground with a dumb expression on his face. 

“I think I'm in love,” he confided to Monty seriously, and Monty did his best to ignore the horrible churning feeling he felt deep in his stomach at his best friend’s proclamation. 

“How can you be in love with her?” Monty almost instantly fired back, surprising himself by how irritated he sounded. “You don't even know her!”

“I'd  _ like _ to know her,” Jasper responded sincerely, before finally taking a moment to realize how tense Monty was, arms crossed over his chest tightly, feet still tapping, eyes fixed firmly on the ground. 

“Hey.” Before Monty could quite comprehend what was happening, Jasper was on his feet once more, enveloping Monty in one of his tight, warm, Jasper Jordan hugs, catching the black haired boy completely off guard. He pulled back after a second, brown eyes gazing intently into Monty’s darker ones. 

“You know I'll always be your best friend, right?” Jasper seemed so genuinely concerned about Monty that in that moment Monty wanted to cry, but he refrained and nodded instead, not trusting his voice. “No girl is ever gonna replace you. You're Monty! The halogen to my alkaline!” Monty couldn't resist the chemistry joke, and cracked a small smile. “It's gonna be you and me till the end of time.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” 

Monty wonders if Jasper remembers this day, too. Wonders if he remembers his promise. Because on that day, Monty was seven years old and only beginning to realize that he was in love with his very best friend in the whole wide galaxy.

* * *

 

He is eight years old and he is in love. 

Monty knows that it’s odd to be so sure of his feelings so young, and he’d tried to brush them off as brotherly affection, but he knew that to him, Jasper was no brother. Monty looked at Jasper the way he saw his mother look at his father, the way that Jason looked at Meredith. To him, Jasper was his star, the center of his universe. There wasn’t a day that went by without Jasper right by his side. 

Bellamy had told him a story, once, about how the Greeks believed that people had initially been created with two heads, four arms, and four legs, but the gods had believed them too powerful, and had split them all in half. And how each person had gone on through life searching for their other half, their soulmate. Looking down the future of his life, Monty couldn’t imagine even a second without Jasper in it (that was a bit of an exaggeration, but Jasper was Monty’s best friend in the world, his main support, his partner-in-crime). 

Jasper, who refused to take off his chemist goggles under threat of death (by his mother, who thought they looked horrendous), whose eyes were always bright, joke on the tip of his tongue. Jasper, who drove their teachers crazy with his incessant chatter, making wide sweeping gestures with his hands to get a point across. Jasper, who was tactless and blunt, but who was oh-so-kind, who was able to tell when Monty was upset even when Monty himself didn’t quite understand what he was feeling. Who was always there. Ever minute, every moment, every memory. 

“Hey, cheeseball!”

Monty scowled good-naturedly at the weird nickname, laughing when Jasper tackled him to the ground, giving the smaller boy a noogie. They rolled around on the ground for a moment, roughhousing, before Meredith entered the room and shook her head fondly at them. 

“Stop before you break something boys,” she teased, before pausing, “not that the two of you are big enough to break anything anyways.” Jasper emerged victorious from the two-man dogpile, scowling at his mother, mirth shining in his eyes.

“I’ll have you know I’ve broken  _ three  _ beakers so far in my chemistry career,” he said hotly, to which Meredith raised an eyebrow.

“And that’s something to be proud of?” Jasper opened his mouth as though to agree, before wisening up and deciding to refrain.

“Besides,” Monty continued, “breaking glass doesn’t count. It’s glass. It breaks easily.  _ Anyone  _ could break glass if they really wanted to. Not that they’d want to, of course.” Meredith laughed as Jasper made a betrayed noise.

“I knew there was a reason I liked you,” she chuckled, before handing them each their ration ticket for the night’s meal, “Hannah dropped yours off, Monty, she and your father are working an extra shift to cover for Elizabeth, she’s just had her baby.” She eyed the two boys sternly. “And no funny business, you hear?”

“Yes ma’am, Mrs. Jordan ma’am sir,” Monty quips, and she rolls her eyes at him before shooing the two eight year olds out of the room before they can cause any damage. Monty and Jasper make a game of it, rushing to the mess hall. They stick to the shadows, pretending every passing person was an enemy, making secretive hand gestures that spoke in a language only they understood, communicating with their eyes and complete silence. 

Until they were interrupted. 

“What are you two  _ doing?” _ They freeze as though they’ve been caught doing something horrible (which they haven’t) and Monty takes a small moment to thank his intuition for hiding the ration stamps in his socks. Looming over them (well, as much as a couple of ten-year-olds  _ could  _ loom) were three of the banes of Monty and Jasper’s very existence. Nathan Miller and his best friends, Sterling and Atom. 

“Just playing, Nathan,” Jasper offered tentatively, but paled immediately upon the older boy’s harsh glare at the mention of his first name, “I mean, uh, Mr. Miller, sir.” He nodded his head once appraisingly, and Sterling and Atom fell back. Monty hadn’t even noticed them stalking forward ever-so-slightly. 

The ringleader tutted at them as though he was disappointed, shaking his head.

“What are you, four?” Jasper opened his mouth, probably to inform Miller that they were, in fact,  _ eight,  _ but Monty slapped his hand over Jasper’s mouth before he could anger the bullies. At the action, Monty felt the weight of Miller’s gaze slip to him, eyeing him up and down calculatingly. “You should be more like pipsqueak, Jordan, knows how to keep his mouth shut and his head down.” 

Inwardly, Monty was seething, but he knew that punching the son of the Head Guard wasn’t the best idea, so he remained silent, biting the inside of his cheek so hard he knew that there’d be blood. After a few long moments of posturing, the three bullies finally grew bored and left, and Monty and Jasper heaved a sigh of relief in perfect tandem.

“Thanks,” said Jasper softly, “for not letting me say anything stupid.”

“You’re  _ Jasper Jordan _ ,” Monty responded fondly, shaking his head, “you could  _ never  _ say anything stupid. You’re a genius.”

* * *

 

Thirteen is an important year for Monty. 

Love had blossomed in his chest like a secret flower, hiding away behind walls of science related jokes and forced smiles, listening to Jasper blabber on about Anne Perkins, and then Carmilla Regent, from Lupita Cumberland to Katherine Presley, and so,  _ so  _ many more. Each word muttered with utter adoration, a faraway look in Jasper’s eyes had been like thorns pricking into Monty’s skin, leaving tiny scars that one couldn’t see unless they were looking. At this point, he’d pretty much accepted defeat, because Jasper was so unfortunately  _ straight _ .

At thirteen, Monty finally allowed his own dark eyes to wander the halls of the Ark, and had settled themselves on a bright boy named Mason Eldridge, with tanned skin and eyes almost as dark as Monty’s, who was two years older. 

He told his parents first, a small mumble over the usual clamor of their evening meal, shared in their familial quarters, so quiet that his father hadn’t heard it the first time. But Hannah had, and she smiled so widely and hugged Monty so tight that he knew, then, that everything was going to be alright (he didn’t know why he was worried in the first place). His father had clapped him on the back and ruffled his hair and told him, very seriously, that he still expected Monty to act like an utter gentleman when it came to the objects of his affection, and given him an utterly mortifying lecture on the importance of protection (“Just because you won’t be getting any girls pregnant doesn’t mean there aren’t  _ other  _ things you can contract, Monty”). 

They asked, of course, if he’d told Jasper, and he shook his head, claiming he was waiting for the right time. A small, scared part of him was worried that Jasper might not look at him the same ever again. It was irrational, he knew, but he couldn’t help it.

The moment finally came when he was sitting, cross-legged, on Jasper’s bed, his best friend talking about his current crush, Adina something, when he turned suddenly.

“Do you like anyone, Monty?” The question took Monty by surprise, because Jasper often got too caught up in his otherworldly descriptions of the girls he’d “fallen in love with” to remember to ask Monty if he was dealing with any similar struggles too. ( _ Yes,  _ Monty wanted to say,  _ I’m in love with my best friend) _ and he blinked for several seconds before finally mustering up the courage to speak.

“Yeah.”

“Really? What’s her name.”

“His name is Mason Eldridge.” There was a brief pause as Jasper took a moment to process what Monty had just told him, blinking rapidly for a few moments before scrunching up his face.

“The one two years older than us? With the curly hair.”

“Yeah, that one.”

“Nice, I approve, he’s a cool guy.”

Inwardly, Monty wished that there was more of a reaction. A small part of him had wanted Jasper to be disappointed, not because that Monty was expressing his interest in guys, but that Monty was expressing interest in someone that  _ wasn’t Jasper.  _ But there was no telltale flicker of pain or jealousy in Jasper’s eyes when Monty told him, only mild confusion and then nonchalant acceptance. 

(The next time Jasper asked about Mason, Monty merely shook his head and shrugged, claiming to have gotten over it. Truth was, he’d never been  _ really  _ interested in the first place, as he was still hung up on the lanky boy with too many freckles and floppy brown hair and chemists goggles that were still much too large for his head.)

* * *

 

Fifteen is the year that things go to hell in a handbasket. 

Well, not necessarily. Prison was actually alright. Granted, they’d gotten arrested for something pretty stupid (but hey, the high had been worth it for a while) but the people in there weren’t all too bad. 

Jasper and Monty shared a cell together, naturally, but soon got to know the community of the ninety-eight other teenaged prisoners, making friends when they were allowed to exercise or socialize. Finn was always a good laugh, the spacewalker, with his charming smiles and easy-going personality. He and Jasper got along well. Monty found that his childhood bully, Miller, had quelled somewhat, and was a closet literature nerd, so he could discuss the classics with him.

Octavia Blake was a dream come true for Monty, a bright, snarky ray of sunshine entering his life and outshining any standards Bellamy had set. (He wondered what it would be like to have a sibling). Harper and Monroe were joined at the hip, like Monty and Jasper were, and had made quick friends with a girl called Fox. 

The youngest there was a girl named Charlotte, who had nightmares and was protected by the rest of the prisoners. They told her jokes, and lifted her on strong shoulders, telling her that things were going to be okay, sometime. On the rare occasion, Monty caught glimpses of blonde hair and blue eyes, but Clarke Griffin was ever-elusive. Solitary was a fate he wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Miller was the first person Monty told about Jasper, in the shadows of the common room they were allowed to socialize in, Jasper busy chatting at Octavia Blake at miles a minute. Sterling and Atom were busy with John Murphy, who was a bigger bully than Miller had ever been, when the beanie-clad boy told Monty in hushed tones about his boyfriend, Bryan, who Monty knew because they were both from Farming Station.

“I’m in love with a guy, too,” Monty said, and Miller rolled his eyes.

“Of course you are, Greenie,” he shot back quickly, “anyone with two eyes and any brains to rub together can tell that you’ve been in love with Goggle Boy since before you two even knew what love was.”

Monty wished that Jasper was as good at catching onto these things as Miller was.

* * *

 

“ _ Are you okay?” _

_ “I have to be.” _

Monty was not okay. 

Bellamy and Pike were destroying the peace that the hundred had tried so desperately to build, his mother part of those helping. Jaha had returned, and suddenly everyone was as high as a kite, and while Monty could appreciate a good high, this one seemed a little  _ too  _ dangerous. 

His best friend hated him. Hated every fibre of his being.

“ _ You’re all mass murderers.” _

Monty was fifteen years old, with a brain too big for his body, a lump always lodged in his throat, boulders in his heart, blood on his hands, and the lives of three hundred innocents on his shoulders. One of them was a girl who Jasper claimed to have loved.

This time, Monty believed him.

He considered reaching for the glass filled with his own moonshine in front of him, but pushed it away, letting the tears fall down his cheeks in his solitude. No matter how hurt he was, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. A part of him  _ wanted  _ to feel all the pain, so that he couldn’t forget what he’d done. What he’d been forced to do. What Jasper reminded him of every second of every day. 

He still loved him.

Nathan was a blessing in disguise. If someone had told eight-year-old Monty that Nathan Miller would one day become one of his closest friends and confidants, Monty would have sent them straight to Medical to get their head checked. But he was a good listener, and rubbed soothing circles on Monty’s backs when silent sobs wrenched themselves from his chest and staggered breathing turned into hysterical hiccuping. But at the end of the day, the boy who still kept a beanie tucked under his pillow got to return to the embrace of the brown haired boy from Farming Station, leaving Monty alone with his thoughts.

Monty was fifteen years old, but his soul was much, much older. 

He wondered, absentmindedly, if Jasper remembered the promise he’d made, all those years ago.

_ “No girl is ever gonna replace you. You're Monty! The halogen to my alkaline! It's gonna be you and me till the end of time.” _

He wonders if Jasper agonizes over every memory, every waking moment they were together. He stops for a moment and considers that maybe that’s why Jasper drowns himself in alcohol, so that he  _ can’t  _ remember how much Monty had meant to him.

He wishes that things could be simple again.

Monty Green is fifteen years old and he is still so certain that he is in love with one Jasper Quincey Jordan, the once light-hearted boy who’d grown cold and distant, who had shaved off floppy-brown locks and thrown away the chemist goggles he’d once treasured, who had scrubbed his skin until stains of silver nitrate wore off. And he would always love Jasper, no matter how badly the other boy hated him.

Always.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! Come hang out on tumblr: [hedaclexa](http://www.hedaclexa.tumblr.com).


End file.
